This disclosure relates generally to annotating electronic content, and in particular to integrating content viewing and annotation within a single user interface.
Document collaboration tools are becoming a popular resource for users collaborating on production or editing of electronic content. When collaborating on a document, users often communicate their suggestions or opinions for the document to other users by directly annotating the document or by providing comments via a separate communication channel, such as email. Generally, document collaboration tools enable users to create static annotations of documents. That is, a user can add text, images, or other annotations into the document file that can be distributed to other users, but the other users cannot respond to the annotation without modifying the annotation or adding another annotation to the document. Accordingly, users of the document collaboration tools may use a separate communication channel to discuss the document. The users therefore often switch between applications to view the document and comment on the document, which is inconvenient to the users. In particular, such application switching is challenging on a mobile device with limited display area, which often lack space to simultaneously display both a document and a communication application.